Out of the Darkness

by Robert D. McKee

  “All right,” said the judge, “Chester Hedstrom, how do you plead to the crime of performing an illegal abortion on the person of Miss Polly Pratt—guilty or not guilty?”

  Micah swallowed hard. Unable to look at his friend, he stared up at the judge.

  Judge Porterhouse was not a patient man. “Well, sir, let’s have it,” he urged. “How do you plead?”

  Chester cleared his throat, and in a strong, sure voice he said, “My lawyer says I ought to plead not guilty, Judge.”

  “Yes?”

  “So,” continued Chester, “I guess that’s what I’ll do.”

  “You had me worried there for a minute, you stubborn son of a bitch,” Micah whispered from the corner of his mouth to Chester as they sat back down.

  “Golly, Mr. McConners, you don’t think I’d do anything contrary to your sagacious advice, do you?” This was the first time Micah had seen Chester smile since the arrest.

  Porterhouse was writing something in Chester’s file. When he was finished he looked up. “So,” he said, “what about bond?”

  Micah said, “We’d request a personal recognizance bond, Your Honor.”

  “Mr. Anderson?” The judge turned his tiny eyes toward the prosecutor.

  “The state resists that, Your Honor.”

  “Why’s that, Mr. Anderson? Do you expect the doctor here to be a flight risk?” Micah couldn’t tell if the judge was putting the sarcasm in his voice on purpose, or simply making no effort to hide the sarcasm that was always there.

  “Well, sir, of course there is that possibility. This is a heinous crime, Your Honor. The defendant knows the caliber of the state’s case. We have an eyewitness and a confession. I believe that flight is a very distinct possibility.” Anderson removed his monocle in what Micah was sure was a practiced flourish. “And there is the other thing, Judge.”

  “What other thing might that be, Mr. Anderson?”

  “I fear for my witness, sir. When Mrs. Eggers approached the defendant with her concerns about what he had done, he threw her from his house without even allowing her an opportunity to collect her possessions and threatened her physically if she said anything to anyone.”

  “That’s a lie,” Chester muttered under his breath.

  “Quiet,” Micah said.

  “She is concerned for her safety,” Anderson continued, “and frankly, sir, so am I.”

  Porterhouse turned to Micah. “Response, Mr. McConners?”

  “Well, Your Honor,” Micah said, standing, “this is the first we’ve heard anything about threatening the witness. I’ve not even had a chance to discuss it with my client. I guess my initial reaction is to question the accuracy of the allegation. If there is a confession, as Mr. Anderson says—and we are not conceding that at this point—but if there is, it seems strange to me that an individual who is willing to confess would threaten to harm some woman to keep her from divulging the very facts he is confessing.”

  Porterhouse seemed to ponder that for a moment, then said, “Very well, I’ll set the bond at ten thousand dollars, personal recognizance. That means, doctor, that you are released from jail without posting any money, but if you flee the jurisdiction of the court, when you’re caught, you’ll owe the State of Wyoming ten thousand dollars. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes, sir, Judge, I do,” Chester said.

  “I’ll also put in the order that you’re to stay away from the state’s witnesses, whoever they may be.”

  “I’m sure that will be no problem, Judge,” Micah said.

  “Court’s in recess,” Porterhouse said. With a groan, he hefted himself from his chair and left the courtroom.

  Seeing Brad Collins come up to the defense table, Micah said to Chester, “You’ll have to go back with the sheriff until the paperwork’s done. Once that’s completed and filed, you’ll be free to go.”

  “All right.” As Collins led him away, Chester turned and said, “Thanks, Micah.”

  Micah nodded. “Don’t worry, Chester. Everything’s going to be all right.” He wasn’t positive, but he thought he made it come out with more conviction than he felt. He hoped so, anyway.

  Collins took Chester out the door next to the bench. Once they were gone, Micah turned to see Anderson leaving through another door at the back of the courtroom. “Mr. Anderson,” he called, “do you have a minute?”

  Anderson stopped and waited for Micah to walk over. “Yes, young man?” he said in the same condescending tone he’d used at the park the first day Micah was home.

  “Could we talk?” Micah asked.

  “Of course we can, my boy. I expect you wish to make a deal. Am I right?”

  Micah was a bit disarmed. He expected Anderson to show more guile. He didn’t believe for a second the man was without guile, but he hadn’t expected him to be very good at it. “Well,” he said, looking down at his boots and scratching the back of his head, “I’m realistic, Mr. Anderson. I’d be a fool to deny you have a strong case.”

  An odd smile crept across the little man’s face. “Yes,” he said, “you would be, wouldn’t you?”

  “But you and I both know this was an isolated event. Dr. Hedstrom is not an abortionist.”

  Anderson held up a slender index finger. “Wait,” he said. “Excuse me for interrupting, but the man performed an abortion on an eighteen-year-old girl. That does not make him a deacon, young man. That, as I understand the term, makes him an abortionist.”

  Micah had known of the problems between Chester and Anderson but did not realize until now how difficult that animosity was going to make things. “Yes,” he conceded, “perhaps it does.” Micah leaned against the flimsy courtroom bar and felt it rock under him. He quickly took his weight off the rail and stood up straight. “I think we should start this off by being honest with each other. I know there’s no love between you and Dr. Hedstrom.”

  “On the contrary,” Anderson said. “I’ve always considered the doctor a fine man.” The eyebrow above the eye not holding the monocle lifted a quarter of an inch. “To be sure, we don’t always agree on things, but I would never begrudge any man his opinion. Until now, I’ve had the deepest respect for the doctor. You can imagine my shock when I learned he had committed this horrible crime.”

  Micah could see now why Chester disliked Anderson so. “Yes,” he said, “I suppose in your line of work you often encounter things that would shock a person of your fine sensibilities.”

  Anderson paused a beat. Micah assumed he was trying to determine if Micah was being serious. “Well,” Anderson said, “we all must do whatever it takes to do our duty.”

  “Yes,” Micah agreed, “which is what I’m doing now. It would do no one any good for this matter to go to trial.”

  “Particularly your client,” Anderson pointed out.

  “Well, the community too. It would be unfortunate to have this become some sort of public spectacle. Dr. Hedstrom has many friends. He’s well liked.”

  “He might be less so once people see him for the killer of babies that he is.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Micah. “Don’t you think that’s overstating it a bit?”

  “No,” Anderson said, “I do not. And I’ll tell you right now, I expect to put on testimony to describe in vivid detail exactly what takes place in one of these brutal surgeries. The jury will have no doubt in their minds when they retire to deliberate what sort of crime your friend, the good Dr. Hedstrom, committed when he performed his abortion.”

  Micah stared down at Anderson until the little man began to squirm, but Anderson did not look away. “You seem to have strong feelings about this, Mr. Anderson.”

  “I do, sir.”

  And Micah realized by the expression that shadowed Anderson’s face that the prosecutor was enjoying all of this. There could never be a deal with this man. Never. It was pointless to even try.

  “So,” Micah said, unable to resist, “I guess this means you won’t recommend probation.”

  Two lines formed be
tween Anderson’s eyebrows as he considered what Micah had said. He then burst out laughing. He roared and slapped Micah on the shoulder. “Well, I must say, you and Hedstrom share the same conceited sense of humor. You truly do. Which is good. You’re both going to need it before this is finished.”

  He was still laughing as he turned and left the courtroom.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Micah was having a cigarette in the alley behind his office. He leaned against a water barrel and blew smoke toward the stars. It was the last day of September, and there was a chill in the night air, but Micah wore only his suit jacket. He always waited until he had no choice before he took to wearing his winter coat. It was as though the simple act of putting it on was admitting something he didn’t wish to admit.

  He had celebrated his first month as a practicing attorney a few days before, and, God knew, except for Chester’s troubles, it had been an uneventful month. Not counting Chester and Cedra, Micah had acquired only two other clients. One, a man running a logging operation in the mountains around the Ester-brook area had struck a bargain with a local landowner and asked Micah to draw up a contract. It was a complicated affair made up of lease holdings, rights of purchase with options on certain parcels that were to be exercised within one period of time, and options on other parcels that were to be exercised at different periods of time. Micah had worked hard putting the deal together, and he felt good about the document he had devised.

  The other client was, in a roundabout way, none other than Bashful Paxton. Bashful’s pattern of being drunk and disorderly was consistent, as was his Saturday night of sleeping it off in Collins’s jail. But for some reason known only to Judge Porterhouse, the judge wearied of throwing Bashful in jail for only one day a week and took to throwing him in for two. Now this meant that Bashful missed Monday at the barbershop, which infuriated Guthrie Bowls, the shop’s owner, because every day that Bashful was out of the shop was money out of Guthrie’s pocket. Guthrie, being a prudent man, realized that in the long run this was not a paying proposition, so he was willing to invest a little to get Bashful—who everyone knew was the best barber within miles—back in the shop on Monday. It was Guthrie who ended up paying Micah’s fee to accomplish this, but it was Bashful who was Micah’s client.

  Micah felt he’d done an excellent job of presenting Bashful’s case. Although there was no law on his side, Micah argued that a man had the right to count on what punishment he was going to receive for a specific crime. And for about as long as anybody could remember, Bashful’s punishment for being drunk and obnoxious on Saturdays had been one night in jail, no more and no less. It wasn’t as though on recent Saturdays Bashful had been any drunker or any more obnoxious. Hell, Bashful’s manner of obnoxiousness hadn’t changed in years. All that had changed was his sentence.

  When Micah completed his argument, Judge Porterhouse looked down at Bashful—who was by then asleep at the defense table—smacked his gavel, and said, “Two days in jail. Sheriff, take him away.” Which Collins did by hefting Bashful over his shoulder.

  Also in the first month there had been a motion hearing in front of Porterhouse, again sitting as Judge Walker’s district court commissioner, regarding the sworn statement of Mrs. Eggers that Earl Anderson had taken and had typed up. He had hired Judge Walker’s court reporter, Jebediah Blake—at county expense—to ride over from Casper to take Eggers’s testimony. Anderson refused to provide a copy of the statement to Micah, so Micah filed a motion, argued it, and won. Anderson was not pleased, but he had no choice but to make the transcript available.

  After reading it, Chester said the statement was about nine parts lie. All she got right was the fact that the abortion had taken place, but Micah knew when it came right down to it, that was pretty much all she needed to get right.

  If those events—the motion hearing, the drafting of the contract, and the representation of Bashful—were taken out of Micah’s first month of lawyering, things were very slow indeed. In fact, his days and nights were pretty much uneventful except for one thing.

  Fay Charbunneau.

  Micah waited for Fay now. A dirty alleyway separated the buildings on Second Street where Lottie’s Café was located from the buildings on Third where Micah’s office was. Every night shortly after closing, when Lottie did the day’s books, Fay would sneak over to Micah’s. This skulking about was the sort of thing that Micah had dreaded. It was what they had done before, but it could be no other way. Fay could still remember the life her mother and father had lived, and she didn’t want that for them. Neither did Micah. But they couldn’t let each other go. It was difficult, but they were trying to accept the way they had to live.

  And too there was Lottie. Lottie understood Fay’s fears. Lottie had lived the life Fay wished to avoid. And although Lottie liked Micah—she always had—being a religious woman, she couldn’t accept Micah’s and Fay’s sins.

  Fay would tell him of their conversations. “There are fine Negro boys workin’ on the railroad,” Lottie would point out. “Look at them, girl,” she would say. And Fay would answer, “Yes, Momma.” And every night when Lottie did her books, Fay came to Micah.

  Micah dropped his cigarette to the dirt and crushed it under his boot. The evening chill was soaking through his thin jacket, and he was about to step inside when he heard footsteps. He squinted into the gloom, and, sure enough, it was Fay. She was still wearing one of her light summer dresses, but a shawl covered her shoulders. He moved to meet her, and they came together in an embrace. Fay held the ends of the shawl in each hand, and when she wrapped her arms around Micah, she brought him into the warmth of the shawl as well.

  Micah bent and kissed her and, as always, he felt himself fill up.

  “I can’t stay but a minute,” she said, placing her head against his chest. “There’s still a customer, but I knew you’d be waiting.”

  Micah put his face into Fay’s thick, wavy hair. It was soft, flowed past her shoulders, and smelled of lilacs. “I was hoping you could stay for a while tonight,” he said. Some nights she would stay longer than others, and they would talk and make love for hours in his tiny bed.

  “I don’t think it’ll be much longer, and I can come back. I spoke with Momma today.”

  “You did?” He didn’t have to ask her what about. “What did you say?”

  “I told her how we feel about each other, which she already knew, of course. And I said, ‘Momma, Micah and I have enough problems in this world without you being one too.’ ”

  “My, aren’t we brave? And what did she say to that?”

  “At first it was the usual. I let her talk as long as she wanted. I let her say everything she had to say. When she finished, I said, ‘Momma, everything you said is the truth. Every word of it is God’s own truth.’ ” Fay smiled. “Momma said, ‘Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Jesus, for letting my baby see the light.’ And I said, ‘Momma, don’t be thanking the Man too soon until you’ve heard the rest of what I have to say. What you said is the truth, but it doesn’t matter.’ I said, ‘You act like Micah and I have a choice about how we feel. You think we can make it stop and go on about our business, but we can’t.’ ” She lay her head back against him. “I said, ‘We lost that choice years ago. Now all we are trying to do is cope the best way we can.’ ”

  “What did she say to that?”

  “Nothing. I wouldn’t let her say another word. It was my turn to talk.”

  “You and Lottie are a lot alike,” Micah pointed out.

  Fay lifted her head and gave him a look that communicated danger. Luckily, except for the look, she ignored the remark.

  “I told her we knew we could never have a normal life . . .” After a pause, she added, “A family. I promised we were being careful about that.” She gave a little shiver when she recalled that part of the conversation with her mother. I told her that made us sad, and that we felt cheated, and that sometimes it made us mad too. But we can’t change what is. We have to live with it.”


  She pulled him closer, snuggling them both deeper into her shawl. “Or,” she added in a soft voice, one he had to strain to hear, “live around it.”

  They stood like that awhile, holding each other, not speaking. After a bit, Fay pulled away. “I can’t be doing this,” she said. “I’ve got to get back. Besides, I don’t like leaving Momma alone with that man.”

  “Who’s there?”

  “It’s one of the Jones boys. Lester. He’s drunk as usual.”

  “Where’s Hank?” Micah asked. “You don’t often see one without the other. Or without Sonny Pratt, either, for that matter.”

  “I’m not sure what happened, but there was some kind of fight. I get the idea that Sonny and Hank beat the devil out of Lester.”

  “Oh?”

  “Lester came in about thirty minutes ago wanting coffee—well, he was so drunk, first he wanted whiskey, but when I told him we didn’t have any, he settled for coffee. His face was all bruised and his lip cut. He said Hank had knocked out one of his teeth, but for the life of me, I can’t imagine how he could tell.”

  “I expect Lester can count to at least four, so he should be able to keep track of his teeth. Now if his toes started falling off, he might be in trouble. What was the fight about, anyway?”

  “Who knows? They probably don’t even know. It could be anything with those three.”

  “Was Sonny part of it too?”

  “It sounded like it.”

  That didn’t surprise Micah. Although Sonny Pratt was much smarter than either of the Jones boys—or the two of them combined, for that matter—they were always together.

  Fay stepped back and pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. “Autumn is in the air,” she said, looking up at the gray swipe of Milky Way that spanned the opening between the buildings. “It won’t be long before the cold’s here to stay.”

  “I hate that,” Micah said. He had spent his earliest years in Amarillo, Texas, where it got plenty cold, but in the Panhandle winter started later and spring started sooner than they did in Wyoming. He’d sometimes considered moving to warmer climes, but Probity was his home. His father was buried here. He looked at Fay. This was where he wanted to be.